My Bondage and My Freedom
wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, but our author had fully grown up to the conviction of a truth
which they had once promulged, but now forgotten, to wit: that in their
own elevation—self-elevation—colored men have a blow to strike “on
their own hook,” against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston
friends in this matter, diffident in his own abilities, reluctant at
their dissuadings, how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still
clung to their principles in all things else, and even in this.
Now came the trial hour. Without cordial support from any large body of
men or party on this side the Atlantic, and too far distant in space
and immediate interest to expect much more, after the much already
done, on the other side, he stood up, almost alone, to the arduous
labor and heavy expenditure of editor and lecturer. The Garrison party,
to which he still adhered, did not want a _colored_ newspaper—there was
an odor of _caste_ about it; the Liberty party could hardly be expected
to give warm support to a man who smote their principles as with a
hammer; and the wide gulf which separated the free colored people from
the Garrisonians, also separated them from their brother, Frederick
Douglass.
The arduous nature of his labors, from the date of the establishment of
his paper, may be estimated by the fact, that anti-slavery papers in
the United States, even while organs of, and when supported by,
anti-slavery parties, have, with a single exception, failed to pay
expenses. Mr. Douglass has maintained, and does maintain, his paper
without the support of any party, and even in the teeth of the
opposition of those from whom he had reason to expect counsel and
encouragement. He has been compelled, at one and the same time, and
almost constantly, during the past seven years, to contribute matter to
its columns as editor, and to raise funds for its support as lecturer.
It is within bounds to say, that he has expended twelve thousand
dollars of his own hard earned money, in publishing this paper, a
larger sum than has been contributed by any one individual for the
general advancement of the colored people. There had been many other
papers published and edited by colored men, beginning as far back as
1827, when the Rev. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russworm (a graduate
of Bowdoin college, and afterward Governor of Cape Palmas) published
the _Freedom’s Journal_, in New York City; probably not less than one
hundred newspaper enterprises have been started in the United States,
by free colored men, born free, and some of them of liberal education
and fair talents for this work; but, one after another, they have
fallen through, although, in several instances, anti-slavery friends
contributed to their support. 3 It had almost been given up, as an
impracticable thing, to maintain a colored newspaper, when Mr.
Douglass, with fewest early advantages of all his competitors, essayed,
and has proved the thing perfectly practicable, and, moreover, of great
public benefit. This paper, in addition to its power in holding up the
hands of those to whom it is especially devoted, also affords
irrefutable evidence of the justice, safety and practicability of
Immediate Emancipation; it further proves the immense loss which
slavery inflicts on the land while it dooms such energies as his to the
hereditary degradation of slavery.
It has been said in this Introduction, that Mr. Douglass had raised
himself by his own efforts to the highest position in society. As a
successful editor, in our land, he occupies this position. Our editors
rule the land, and he is one of them. As an orator and thinker, his
position is equally high, in the opinion of his countrymen. If a
stranger in the United States would seek its most distinguished men—the
movers of public opinion—he will find their names mentioned, and their
movements chronicled, under the head of “BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH,” in the
daily papers. The keen caterers for the public attention, set down, in
this column, such men only as have won high mark in the public esteem.
During the past winter—1854-5—very frequent mention of Frederick
Douglass was made under this head in the daily papers; his name glided
as often—this week from Chicago, next week from Boston—over the
lightning wires, as the name of any other man, of whatever note. To no
man did the people more widely nor more earnestly say, _“Tell me thy
thought!”_ And, somehow or other, revolution seemed to follow in his
wake. His were not the mere words of eloquence which Kossuth speaks of,
that delight the ear and then pass away. No! They were _work_-able,
_do_-able words, that brought forth fruits in the revolution in
Illinois, and in the passage of the franchise resolutions by the
Assembly of New York.
And the secret of his power, what is it? He is a Representative
American man—a type of his countrymen. Naturalists tell us that a full
grown man is a resultant or representative of all animated nature on
this globe; beginning with the early embryo state, then representing
the lowest forms of organic life, 4 and passing through every
subordinate grade or type, until he reaches the last and
highest—manhood. In like manner, and to the fullest extent, has
Frederick Douglass passed through every gradation of rank comprised in
our national make-up, and bears upon his person and upon his soul every
thing that is American. And he has not only full sympathy with every
thing American; his proclivity or bent, to active toil and visible
progress, are in the strictly national direction, delighting to
outstrip “all creation.”
Nor have the natural gifts, already named as his, lost anything by his
severe training. When unexcited, his mental processes are probably
slow, but singularly clear in perception, and wide in vision, the
unfailing memory bringing up all the facts in their every aspect;
incongruities he lays hold of incontinently, and holds up on the edge
of his keen and telling wit. But this wit never descends to frivolity;
it is rigidly in the keeping of his truthful common sense, and always
used in illustration or proof of some point which could not so readily
be reached any other way. “Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding,” is a
shaft that strikes home in a matter never so laid bare by satire
before. “The Garrisonian views of disunion, if carried to a successful
issue, would only place the people of the north in the same relation to
American slavery which they now bear to the slavery of Cuba or the
Brazils,” is a statement, in a few words, which contains the result and
the evidence of an argument which might cover pages, but could not
carry stronger conviction, nor be stated in less pregnable form. In
proof of this, I may say, that having been submitted to the attention
of the Garrisonians in print, in March, it was repeated before them at
their business meeting in May—the platform, _par excellence_, on which
they invite free fight, _a l’outrance_, to all comers. It was given out
in the clear, ringing tones, wherewith the hall of shields was wont to
resound of old, yet neither Garrison, nor Phillips, nor May, nor
Remond, nor Foster, nor Burleigh, with his subtle steel of “the ice
brook’s temper,” ventured to break a lance upon it! The doctrine of the
dissolution of the Union, as a means for the abolition of American
slavery, was silenced upon the lips that gave it birth, and in the
presence of an array of defenders who compose the keenest intellects in
the land.
_“The man who is right is a majority”_ is an aphorism struck out by Mr.
Douglass in that great gathering of the friends of freedom, at
Pittsburgh, in 1852, where he towered among the highest, because, with
abilities inferior to none, and moved more deeply than any, there was
neither policy nor party to trammel the outpourings of his soul. Thus
we find, opposed to all disadvantages which a black man in the United
States labors and struggles under, is this one vantage ground—when the
chance comes, and the audience where he may have a say, he stands forth
the freest, most deeply moved and most earnest of all men.
It has been said of Mr. Douglass, that his descriptive and declamatory
powers, admitted to be of the very highest order, take precedence of
his logical force. Whilst the schools might have trained him to the
exhibition of the formulas of deductive logic, nature and circumstances
forced him into the exercise of the higher faculties required by
induction. The first ninety pages of this “Life in Bondage,” afford
specimens of observing, comparing, and careful classifying, of such
superior character, that it is difficult to believe them the results of
a child’s thinking; he questions the earth, and the children and the
slaves around him again and again, and finally looks to _“God in the
sky”_ for the why and the wherefore of the unnatural thing, slavery.
_“Yes, if indeed thou art, wherefore dost thou suffer us to be slain?”_
is the only prayer and worship of the God-forsaken Dodos in the heart
of Africa. Almost the same was his prayer. One of his earliest
observations was that white children should know their ages, while the
colored children were ignorant of theirs; and the songs of the slaves
grated on his inmost soul, because a something told him that harmony in
sound, and music of the spirit, could not consociate with miserable
degradation.
To such a mind, the ordinary processes of logical deduction are like
proving that two and two make four. Mastering the intermediate steps by
an intuitive glance, or recurring to them as Ferguson resorted to
geometry, it goes down to the deeper relation of things, and brings out
what may seem, to some, mere statements, but which are new and
brilliant generalizations, each resting on a broad and stable basis.
Thus, Chief Justice Marshall gave his decisions, and then told Brother
Story to look up the authorities—and they never differed from him.
Thus, also, in his “Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement,” delivered
before the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Douglass
presents a mass of thought, which, without any showy display of logic
on his part, requires an exercise of the reasoning faculties of the
reader to keep pace with him. And his “Claims of the Negro
Ethnologically Considered,” is full of new and fresh thoughts on the
dawning science of race-history.
If, as has been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is
most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused. Memory, logic,
wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural
beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper
place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete
in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a
corner, for his positions are taken so deliberately, that it is rare to
find a point in them undefended aforethought. Professor Reason tells me
the following: “On a recent visit of a public nature, to Philadelphia,
and in a meeting composed mostly of his colored brethren, Mr. Douglass
proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and
duties of ‘our people;’ he holding that prejudice was the result of
condition, and could be conquered by the efforts of the degraded
themselves. A gentleman present, distinguished for logical acumen and
subtlety, and who had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five
years to the study and elucidation of this very question, held the
opposite view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He
terminated a series of well dove-tailed, Socratic questions to Mr.
Douglass, with the following: ‘If the legislature at Harrisburgh should
awaken, to-morrow morning, and find each man’s skin turned black and